Steve,

welcome to the forum and the ABS. I'm pretty new at this myself, but will try to answer what I can. If I'm wrong, there are much more knowledgable folks here to correct me. <img src=' http://www.americanbladesmith.com/ipboard/public/style_emoticons//smile.gi f' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' />

1. On using charcoal, smiths used charcoal for a very long time and continue to use it all over the world. I use charcoal myself. Depending on how much your charcoal costs per pound/kilogram(I'm not sure which unit of measure is used where you're located), coal may be more effceint fuel as it burns longer but cost is always a key factor, especially in the beginning. If you are staying with carbon steels(10XX series), a forge should be fine. Remember, smiths using special heat treat ovens are a recent thing. If nothing else, you can use your kitchen oven. You just need a constant heat for a set time. You can use a toaster oven from a flea market as long as it can reach the tempature you need. For tool steels, O-1 has one of the lowest hardening tempatures of all the tool steels and can be heat treated at the forge. It is also easily aquired.

2. I would say to hot work the steel. It will move easier under the hammer blows and save your elbow and shoulder. Be aware that as you work metal, you are putting stress into it. It's my understanding that the hotter the steel when forging, the better it handles the stress. The more stress, the greater the chance of cracking. But remember, I'm pretty new too and could be way off.

3. I work outside and have to deal with sunlight. If you are trying to determine critical tempature, you can use a magnet. When steel reaches critical, it temporarily loses it's attatraction to a magnet. An old speaker magnet works good. As for the other temps, I'm still working on that one myself. <img src=' http://www.americanbladesmith.com/ipboard/public/style_emoticons//cool.gi f' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='B)' /> I have a picture I use as a guide, but with the sunlight I have made some bad guesses.

4. Don't know that one. Sorry.

Hopefully, I haven't led you too far astray. Ok, back to my corner.

Thanks for the advice, Cheyenne.

1. I agree about the charcoal--it's worked for a long time for a lot of smiths, so it should be fine for me. I got a little ahead of myself investigating more complex steels (0-1, 52100) which require such specific and lengthy soaks at very exact temperatures to be worth using right now for me. I'm using very old technology so I will stick with simple steels, like the steels used (more or less) by the smiths of old.

2. I agree that the hotter the easier (and less stress inducing, I guess), but I my question was more about the ideal working sequence. Perhaps I'm just misreading Kevin Cashen's website, but his protocol for working with 1084 states, "do not forge below 1500 F" which is well above critical--but that doesn't seem to be common practice (it seems that many smiths start hammering on their first few heats near or above critical and then during the last few heats they heat less and less and forge in the colder dark red ranges). Also, doesn't heating above critical to forge cause grain growth? Or is this grain growth taken care of during normalizing?

Thank you for responding. Any advice is welcome.

Steve,

Cheyenne may be new to forging but his assesment is was very accurate in my opinion.

There are a multitude of opinions on the matter of forging temperatures, but it's always wise to stick with basic, tried and true, methods. One thing I want to clarify is the meaning of "forging". That might mean different things to different folks. But forging is moving metal as opposed to straightening, packing, etc. When you start with a round bar or a large chunk and have to reduce it into a blade shape, that is forging. The squishing, pounding, heavy blows of the hammer and anvil require the steel to be hot to be mallable, offering less resistance to it's movement thus less stress on the steel. The general consensus is that you should forge at higher temperatures (bright orange to bright red) and reduce the heat SLIGHTLY (into the medium to low reds)as the metal moving lessens and the straightening and packing phases take over. I personally dont practice packing per say. To me it's all straightening and grain reducion by normalizing and thermocycling after the bulk of metal moving is done. The thermocycling reduces the grain size after the hotter forging temperatures have inlarged them. The thermocycling and grain reducing stage should happen in preparation for the quench. Once the grain is reduced you should be working toward preserving the small size of that grain and not get above critical more than say 100 degrees or so.

All of the clarification on color and temperature is pointless if you cant calibrate your eye to know where you are on the charts. A shop that has consistant lighting is really important. A tarp or a shade tree might have to do, but you will HAVE to get to know and recognize your tempertaures pretty closely to remaing within safe ranges for the forging and straightening.

I would stick with simple steels and get the process down first, then branch into others.

As for all of the advice you hear. It's like any other area of life. Stick with the experts. Yesterday I saw a gentleman carrying a bar of steel with a partial blade forged onto the end of the bar and asked I him what steel he had. He said "it used to be mild steel but I heated and quenched it and now it's hard" as he walked away. I know he had been listening to wrong advice but what can you do?

Lin,

Thank you for the advice/information. I was confusing "forging" with shaping/straightening/etc.

I think the trouble I've been having recently is due to not having consistent lighting. I just put a roof on my shop a couple weeks ago, so now I can work when it's raining or when it's sunny--but I need to get some black cloth or tarps set up on the edges of the roof to control the light even more.

If you don't mind a follow up question: What is a good thermocycling protocol for 1084? I don't have an oven, just have the charcoal forge. I am going to see if I can get vermiculite today, although I live in a country where baking soda, ammonia, white gas, and other common household items (that are used in drug production) are restricted. Let's hope vermiculite isn't one of them! And I haven't found quenching oil here, but was planning to use canola oil for now.

Again, thanks for the advice and help.

1084 is a good basic steel to work with. I start thermocycling about 100 degrees above critical (1525F or so) and let cool to black, run it back up to 50 degrees above critical and let cool to black, then run it up to critical and quench if I'm hardening it.

Steve,

You've gotten some great advice from everyone so far. About the only thing that I can offer is a link to our own Kevin Cashen's 1084 heat treating advice sheet. check it out, there's a lot of good info in there. I hope he doesn't mind me posting it.

http://www.knivesby.com/knifemaking-Kevin-Cashen-treating-1084.html

As Cheyenne mentioned,a magnet can be used to judge Austinizing temperatures. A magnet only marks the beginning of the austinizing process however. As Kevin notes in his explanation, at around 1414 degrees 1084 hits the Currie point (becomes non-magnetic) but it doesn't fully come into solution until around 1500 degrees. A person can work to develop their eye using a magnet but the learning curve will be much easier and more accurate if more sophisticated equipment is used. Don't be discouraged though, a lot can be gleaned from a magnet and a lot of practice and testing. To get the absolute most out of any steel we need precision.

Vermiculite is used in the horticulture industry and should be able to be found at a nursery or greenhouse supply. I'm not up on the latest drug production methods but I'm pretty sure vermiculite isn't on the common supply list. If you have trouble finding it, I've heard of lime or ashes being used. Using charcoal for your forge has probably left you with a good supply of ash. Whatever you end up using, make sure that it's dry so that it provides the greatest amount of insulation value..

Lin and Rick,

Good advice all around--thank you for taking the time to post.

All the quotes of my work is fine, it justifies the reason I have been typing all these years so that one day I may not have to type as much <img src=' http://www.americanbladesmith.com/ipboard/public/style_emoticons//wink.gi f' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=';)' />. But all the same I like helping where I can so I still like to give answers if I can. There is plenty of good advice here, and I find much agreement with what Lin has already stated, I think it is great how often the guys with the MS next to their name tend to agree with each other these days, that was not always the case and this is consistent reinforcement of what really works is a testament to the success in education and information provided through the ABS.

"Forging” as in heavy reduction and movement of the metal is indeed a process of a good higher temperature. My site incorporates industrial specs by the people who make and work with steel and the final small adjustments of a knife edge hardly resembles the massive reduction of industrial drop forging, but our initial heats that pull out the point, shape the tang, and induce tapers are similar and really should be done at a temperature that facilitates it properly. When I teach I always have a soap stone in my pocket and swipe it down the sides of the beginner’s forgings, if it is one solid sheet of white it is good! However most beginners have a distinct outline of white with the center completely untouched, indicative of a forging that is like an "I" beam in cross section, particularly near the point. This is due to insufficient heat for the hammer blows produced and resulting in mushrooming of the edges as the steel at the outer edges merely expands sideways instead of being driven into the center of the bar. This makes a poor forging and is not so good for the steel.

Proper forging temperatures are a matter of balancing the heat with the force of the blows to affect a couple of areas. The first we already discussed is in the amount of metal being moved evenly throughout the cross section, the other is a matter of grain size control. I must caution right now however that this is a very overblown concern among many smiths and one can get so hung up on grain size in forging that they can lose sight of the main objective of properly moving the steel. Where grain size is concerned it must be understood that homogenous size is the greater factor than how fine we can get it, and hand forging will rarely achieve this without supplemental normalizing. Grain size is controlled by the rate of new grains formed- not breaking up, fracturing, shrinking or condensing the existing grains, all of which is either rather bad, or outright impossible according to the laws of physics. The rate of new grains formed is controlled by energy introduced into the steel. First we have heat which is the most powerful but is continuous above 1335F, so heating above this temp will only work with the same set of grains, which will stabilize and hold their size for a while but then begin to grow with more heat. Next we have the hammer blows themselves which distort the existing grains to introduce strain energy and causes nucleation of new grains in the heated steel, a process known as “dynamic recrystallization.” If the heat is balanced with the rate of dynamic recrystallization you do not get grain growth from forging, but a hand hammer can only produce this in rather localized ways, and this is why it is not so good to heat the whole blade when all you need to forge is a small area of it. So, if you hit harder than the heat can accommodate you will not evenly move the steel; not good forging. If you heat higher than the hammer can compensate for you will get grain growth. Since straining the metal beyond its limits can indeed result in micro fracturing and other issues, I would prefer to err on the side of higher heat since grain size can be fixed in just a couple of normalizing cycles.

As Lin pointed out, to maintain a nice balance you will naturally reduce your heats as you near the final shaping of the knife, where the edge and tip is much smaller and you are moving much less metal. Lower heats will result in less scaling and allow you to smooth out and straighten the blade more cleanly. The best name for this I have heard is called “hammer polishing”, not packing. There is no such thing as “packing”, this not a slight against any other smiths beliefs it is just a statement of facts, just as assuring you that the bogeyman is not ruining your knives when you are not looking. It is pure myth based on misinterpretation of what folks saw in the old days and did not have the facts to assign appropriate cause and effect. One cannot make steel denser with a hammer, perhaps you could with the weight of an entire planet, such as with the Earths iron core, or maybe if you had a black hole to forge in, but the idea of packing iron atoms (not molecules, metals don’t use molecules) on an anvil is a fairy tale regardless of who says otherwise and it is time our craft got beyond it. Likewise working steel cold does not do you or the steel any favors, and it is worth mentioning that the result of deformation in excess of the given heat is pretty much the same as cold working. If there is no heat to compensate for the pile up of dislocations in the crystalline lattice the steel will work harden and eventually the traffic jams in the system will lead to fracture.

Now where does forging offer advantages? In the heats! Treat each forging heat as if it were a heat treatment and you will do well, but in the end a good series of normalizing heats or “cycling” will catch any problems that may have arisen in the forging process. First it is often important to use higher heats in initial normalizing for the same reasons it is good in forging. High heats will put everything into solution and distribute it evenly. This is true of grain size, but more importantly with carbide. Initial forging and normalizing at high heats can help break up segregation from the mill in a way that the stock remover typically won’t be able to take advantage of; cycling only at low temperatures tends to increase or accentuate segregated conditions.

Thank you Kevin. I was hoping you would post, as my original question about not forging 1084 below 1500 degrees had its origin in my reading (and misinterpreting) your posted protocol for 1084. I have to admit, even knowing that I shouldn't be trying to move lots of metal below 1500 degrees, it is tough sometimes to put the stock back in the forge when I should. I'll work on that...

I'm heading to the shop now to run the soapstone across my practice blades. I'm pretty sure there will be some I-beams in the pile.

Thanks again to everyone who posted replies. Although...I haven't heard anything in response to question #4 about the petition for a summer introduction class. If I start the petition, can I be first on the list for attendees when it finally happens? Maybe that's a bit presumptuous of me... <img src=' http://www.americanbladesmith.com/ipboard/public/style_emoticons//blink.gi f' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':blink:' />

Steve

You are requesting that an Intoduction to Bladesmithing class be offered during the Summer. We have three schools that offer ABS classes. Which of the three schools are you referring to and have you contacted any of the schools or any of the ABS school coordinators about this request?

Texarkana College - JR Cook, MS

Haywood Community College - Bill Wiggins, MS

New England School of Metalwork - Jim Batson, MS

|quoted:

Steve

You are requesting that an Intoduction to Bladesmithing class be offered during the Summer. We have three schools that offer ABS classes. Which of the three schools are you referring to and have you contacted any of the schools or any of the ABS school coordinators about this request?

Texarkana College - JR Cook, MS

Haywood Community College - Bill Wiggins, MS

New England School of Metalwork - Jim Batson, MS

I just started going along that track. I tried contacting the NE School of Metalwork but didn't have any luck (I've been told the heat during the summer might be a bigger issue at the other two schools). I talked with Cindy at ABS today, and started a poll on the forum to see how many folks share my interest for a summer class. I put the poll here:

http://www.americanbladesmith.com/ipboard/index.php?/topic/542-interest-survey-summer-intro-class/

I will email Mr. Batson today.

Thank you for helping to figure this out. I'm sure there is a need for a summer intro class--I just hope the folks who are interested participate in the poll so the need is obvious.

It's not the heat in Arkansas that gets you, it's the humidity. Then the heat. <img src=' http://www.americanbladesmith.com/ipboard/public/style_emoticons//wink.gi f' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=';)' />